"Creature Comforts"

crafting a common language across the species divide

Randy Malamud

pp. 77-94

in: Dominik Ohrem, Roman Bartosch (eds), Beyond the human-animal divide, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

Abstract

Nick Park's claymation film, "Creature Comforts' (1989), is a "mockumentary"-style interview with zoo animals in which the animals discuss how they feel about their captivity. This short film raises important questions about the boundaries between the human and animal worlds and, intriguingly, about the possibility of a common language across morphological, perceptional, experiential, and other species-specific differences. Through an innovative fusion of human and animal perspectives on (and experiences of) freedom and constraint, the film rearticulates existential questions of human being-in-the-world as questions of creaturely life, thus pointing towards a shared horizon of being for all animals beyond human exceptionalism.